Infiniti dreams small

Is this really the best we can do with VR?

In a new campaign for Infiniti’s Q60 luxury car, agency CP+B created a pair of VR experiences that put viewers in the seat of the car as it speeds along a mountain road, or right inside the design of the car as it goes from drawing to model to an actual driveable car. The videos are available to those with Oculus Rift or a DIY Google Cardboard viewer, but are also available on YouTube as interactive pre-roll ads.

Is there some cool innovation behind these videos? Probably. Is it exciting that interactive experiences like these can be hosted right on YouTube, instead of having to build a totally new platform from the ground up? Absolutely. But wow, are these videos ever boring. Maybe it’s cooler when you have an actual VR headset on, and we should have expected one of the first VR pre-roll ads to be less than gripping, but it seems like there was so much that could have been done with this concept (and with relative ease). It’s great to see the car’s concept evolve from the inside, but the viewer is pulled out the moment it changes from model to an actual car. Riding along with the car as it drives is no different than if it had been a POV video shot with a GoPro, as moving the camera and looking around doesn’t reveal anything different, or even give you an idea of what the car’s interior is like. Without adding those small details into something you are already taking the time to build, the experience ends up being very much the same as watching a regular video. It doesn’t matter if you’re using the latest in video technology unless you have entertaining content driving it.